Bertold Hummel began his work as a composition teacher at the Bavarian State Conservatory of Music in Würzburg in 1963, where he got to know and appreciate his new colleague Werner Berndsen. They played together in countless oratorio performances and concerts in and around Würzburg, Berndsen as a flautist and Hummel as a cellist, until the 1980s. With Hummel's support, Werner Berndsen sets up a modern recording studio under the Great Hall of the State Conservatory in Hofstallstraße, which Hummel uses intensively with his composition students. With Werner Berndsen's creative assistance, he composed Yume I-IV for solo flute and flute sounds in 1971, which he dedicated to Werner Berndsen in friendship.

Biography

I, Werner Berndsen, was born in Leipzig on 16 June 1920. I came into contact with music at an early age. Both my parents played the piano and my mother sang in a church choir. When I started school, I became friends with Maximilian Brückner, who was a grandson of the famous flautist and flute designer Maximilian Schwedler. I had my first lessons with him and later with the solo flutist and teacher at the Leipzig University of Music, Carl Bartuzat. I passed my final examination "with honours".

In 1940 I was drafted into the labour service, which took place in Wildfurt in Upper Silesia. My military service began in Finland in 1941. When I arrived there, the first question asked was "who is a musician"! So I was lucky enough to be accepted into a music corps. Our main task was to play at funerals of fallen comrades or at concerts for the troops. We lived with a Finnish family in the village of Pisi. There I had the time and opportunity to build a spinet out of wood and steel wire for the strings, as I could practise the flute but not the piano. Eventually we came to the village of Alkurtti in Lapland. We were allowed to organise a concert with a lieutenant who was a music teacher in his civilian job as a violinist and a comrade who played the cello and a Finnish pianist. In recognition, we were granted a holiday in the southern Finnish town of Kuopio.

After the war ended, I was captured by the Russians in 1945 and sent to a camp in Küstrin, east of Berlin. There we had to help with the harvest. Because I also chewed up cereal grains, I fell ill and was lucky enough to be released soon. I finally returned home to my parents. I applied to several orchestras and opera houses for a job and was lucky enough to start my actual profession as a flautist in Magdeburg.

My professional career took me via the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra to the Berlin Philharmonic as principal flautist. In 1948, Ferenc Fricsay brought me to the RIAS and Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin in the same capacity. On the basis of recommendations from colleagues, even without an audition. The programme for the concert on 12 June 1949 included the Symphonic Metamorphoses on a theme by Carl Maria von Weber. It contains a very difficult solo passage for flute. Fricsay had me play it for him, but immediately cancelled the performance. Since then, I was persona grata for all time. I was even allowed to record two solo concertos by Busoni (Divertimento) and Nabokov (Concerto corale). The orchestra was often conducted by renowned conductors such as Georg Ludwig Jochum, Lorin Maazel, Paul Hindemith, Karl Böhm and others. We also recorded Mozart's Magic Flute in concert. In Salzburg, Fricsay's recording can still be heard today in the Marionette Theatre.

In 1959 he was called to the Bayer. State Conservatory in Würzburg. After being converted into a university, I was appointed professor in 1982. In the course of time, the number of my students had risen to 123. I was also in charge of the recording studio there. Many recordings with colleagues and recordings of concerts were made here. I also played in the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra several times, where I met up with my Berlin colleagues again.

In Würzburg, I met my colleague Bertold Hummel, who later became the director of the Hochschule, and with whom I developed a close friendship. Hummel wrote a composition for me called Yume (Dream Stories) for solo flute and flute sounds (tape montage). The edition was awarded 1st prize in the National Association USA competition for new publications in 1996.

Werner Berndsen (2014)